Rabih Dabboussi is Cisco’s managing director for the UAE. Here, he talks about the US computer networking giant’s presence in the Emirates.

How long has Cisco been in the UAE?

We opened our first office in the UAE in 1994. We have offices in Abu Dhabi, DIFC and Dubai Media City, which is our headquarters for the Middle East and all emerging markets from Russia to South Africa. We moved to the UAE at a critical time when the adoption of technology was starting to pick up. The government and the private sector were looking at technology as a key enabler to do business.

How has the UAE’s infrastructure developed?

We’ve done a good job of building infrastructure. In the region, the UAE has the best [information and communications technology] and network infrastructure – both broadband and mobile coverage – that has enabled individuals and businesses to explore new opportunities [and] improve the quality of life. We’ve capitalised on that growth trajectory and investment and have helped to build on that ICT infrastructure perspective. Government and businesses have helped with this growth, deploying technology to make it a reality. We’re seeing the return of that work pay off as economies accelerate and the country becomes highly competitive. Technology is not the only thing that makes a country competitive, but it is one of the most important ingredients.

Is there still opportunity for growth here?

There is an appetite for leveraging technology to improve every aspect of life in the nation, which is critical. There is also a drive here to continue to adopt technology as an accelerator. We have close to US$2 billion [worth of business] in the UAE alone, we have established a good portfolio of technology that enables us to do better things from better broadband to better telephony, helping to secure the nation’s banks and public information to enable defence and security forces to have better infrastructure.

What’s next?

The dependence on the network has become bigger and bigger in all aspects of life. This is the internet of everything, where the internet becomes a connectivity between people and everything else, even chairs and tables will all be connected to the network in one way or another. There is a commercial aspect to it, it will allow us to collect more data from things that are not connected to the network today, to leverage it in a way to help us to penetrate markets or even predict the weather better.

thamid@thenational.ae